


Five in the Bed and the Little One Said...

by chewysugar



Series: Insomnia Chronicles [1]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bat Brothers, Bat Family, Bickering, Big Brother Dick Grayson, Brotherly Love, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Dad, Dad Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne Feels, Damian Wayne is Robin, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Everyone Has Issues, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Implied Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Insecurity, Insomnia, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Nightmares, No Sex, Sharing a Bed, Teasing, Tim Drake is Red Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 15:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13720500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: During a sleepless night, Bruce is unexpectedly joined by his sons.





	Five in the Bed and the Little One Said...

_In the King bed, the Cali King bed, the Batman sleeps tonight..._  
  
Ironically, Bruce isn’t sleeping, mostly as a result of this ridiculous mnemonic running through his head. He’s even humming it now, propped against the pillows with a case folder open on his lap.  
  
Once upon a lighter time, insomnia would have caused him a great deal of agitation. Nights without sleeping in his youth had him pacing, frustrated and angry at his brain’s inability to quiet the hell down. Age has brought knowledge, and Bruce knows now that the best offensive for battling a busy mind is to accept it.  
  
Browsing through sad murder file after sad murder file isn’t ideal before bed. But it’s activity without exertion. He can focus; get something sorted out before he eventually succumbs to exhaustion. Three to four hours of sleep later and he’ll wake to more activity.  
  
But he’s not so engrossed by the details of loss and tragedy that his senses aren’t alert. The billions of neurons occupying his brain never sleep. His mind is New York City, and every one of his thoughts has an apartment, lights ablaze and music blaring. Bruce can never relax unless he tells them to tamp down the racket.

So it is that, mind’s eye filled with images of bodies left steaming in cold gutters, he still feels the exact second when a set of eyes fix themselves on him.  
  
Bruce looks up from the papers. His lips part in surprise. Not because the sight of the little figure standing in his doorstep is much of a shock—he sleeps with his door ajar in case of emergency, after all. Rather, it’s _who_ is standing there that makes him feel like he was just socked in the jaw.  
  
Damian has his eyes steady on Bruce. Whatever it is that has him out of bed at one in the morning has to be pretty serious. In spite of the continuous haughty exterior passed down from his evil-doing uterus donor, and the finery of his imported Milanese pajamas, he stands there as if he doesn’t know what to do with himself.  
  
“Damian.” Bruce brushes the folders and papers aside. “Is anything the matter?”  
  
“I’m sorry.” Damian’s dark eyes scan Bruce almost apologetically. He swallows a lump in his throat. “I, er, didn’t mean to disturb you...”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. Come in.”  
  
Damian steps as if he’s walking on an active minefield. “I...I can’t sleep.” He says it with a slight catch; he’s suddenly less the disciplined soldier that he was forced to be and more an actual eleven year old boy.  
  
“Oh.” After three sons, one would imagine Bruce would be capable of extolling paternal emotion. But it’s always been different with Damian, which is cruelly unfair. After all, Damian truly is flesh and blood. It isn’t his fault that one half of his family tree grows psychotic.  
  
Damian approaches the side of Bruce’s bed, still looking oddly lost.

Bruce waits; with Damian, patience has always been key. It’s telling of just how much the boy has changed since he came to Wayne Manor that he’s even here in the first place.  
  
After a long moment of contemplating the thread count of his father’s sheets, Damian lets the ice begin to thaw.  
  
“I...had a...nightmare.” His dark skin stains pink. A swift glance beneath his eyelashes shows a face almost ashamed.  
  
Bruce blinks. A glow of affection warms the insides of his permanently shadowed soul. It’s a mark of how much he’s changed since the Robin’s have flown into his life that he doesn’t turn his son away; he doesn’t tell him that he’s too old and brave for something as trite as a bad dream.  
  
“Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
Damian grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes. He’s frustrated, either by admitting to this self-perceived weakness, or at his exhaustion. But in the midst of his aggravated action, he sneaks a nod. Then he shakes his head.  
  
A glimmer of hope sparks in his eyes like the first rumor of a quartz vein in some long deserted mine tunnel. He looks at the bed, and then back at Bruce.  
  
“What are you reading?”  
  
“Nothing really. Just Commissioner Gordon’s leftovers.” He’s treading carefully in these waters because he wants more than anything to survive them. “It’s the Deböen murder,” he adds. The next sentence hangs on the tip of his tongue, all but ready to springboard off and into the pool of conversation. Damian halts it mid-Pike position in the simple act of sitting half on the edge of the bed. His crystal-fire gaze fixes on the Manila envelope by Bruce’s knee; but there’s no curiosity; no determination. Just sadness, the likes of which is so alien in his face that any and all resemblance he may have had to half the evil that begot him disappears without leaving a single trace behind it.  
  
“Damian...what happened in your nightmare?”  
  
“I died.” He stares into his father’s eyes, completely unaware that his words, spoken so quietly, have had the impact of tectonic collapse.  
  
He tries to muster courage, but somehow it fails him. He crawls the rest of the way onto the mattress, and sits cross-legged in front of his stunned and silent father.  
  
“I could see everyone. You, Alfred, Grayson...everybody. And nobody cared.” He swallows down something—a sob, a shudder—Bruce can’t tell. But it breaks his heart. Tears fill Damian’s eyes all at once, a storm breaking through his attempt to keep it at bay. “They all laughed and I was there and dead but I could hear it and feel worms eating my body and—  
  
“Damian, nothing is going to happen to you.” Bruce says it almost as much to console himself from the cold horror; from the numbing memories of another Robin broken and bleeding on a concrete floor; from the bubbling fury that something caused his son this kind of distress. What’s worse is that there’s nothing he can do. After all, he can’t break the neck of a nightmare.  
  
“It happened to Jason, though.” Damian looks with wide, tear-filled eyes at Bruce. “Grayson told me all about it. What you were like...”  
  
“Jason’s alive now. And I’m fine...as fine as a grown man who dresses like a bat can be.” He adds the jest because he wants Damian to smile; wants to hear that laugh that’s too warm to be as pompous as it once was.

Damian’s gaze falls to his lap, and Bruce feels as if he’s uttered some gross profanity in the sight of something angelic. Silence insinuates itself for several lingering moments, in which Bruce marvels at this oft-hidden side of his son. Damian is a spitfire with the ego of a mighty glacier; yet here he is, frightened and confused and in need of something Bruce will give if only he says the word.

Damian finally lifts his head. “It’s all so wonderful here.” He looks around the sanctum of Bruce’s bedroom, forlorn as a Lost Boy without his cock-crowing Peter Pan. “I know I don’t say it, or act it…” And again, his voice breaks, as lost and adrift as he is.

Bruce has seen this in each of his Robin’s—that lost boy or girl needing something to guide them—needing that second star on the right. He made himself the Captain Hook of those old days, when he didn’t know what to do, or even how to do it—when he was too frightened of the reaper known as Loss to even lend anything other than a gruff compliment.

But that was the Bruce Wayne of old—the one who was ignorant of the fact that he could love and be loved in return.

He lets the instinct override the fear he feels. His hands rest on Damian’s shoulder, and the boy once more meets his eyes, vulnerable as the child he truly is. He realizes just how small Damian is—certainly he’s far stronger than any boy his age should be. He’s often seen Damian as his Robin—but never as his son, as his child—as a child at all: his fatal error with all his sons, really.

Bruce can’t tell him that he’ll be fine, because he might not be. Jason wasn’t fine; Tim and Dick have both had shaves far too close for Bruce to ever sleep peacefully again. Even if the lie would soothe them both, Bruce is too cautious to test this cruel, uncaring universe by voicing it. So he just sits there, hands on his little boy’s shoulders.

“I would care,” Bruce whispers. “So many more people than you think would care, Damian.”

“I know. I know that it was just a nightmare but—

“It felt real.”

Damian nods. He rubs at his temples with his balled up fists, as if trying to dig into his own skull. “And I can’t stop thinking about it. How it felt to die…how it felt when I thought nobody cared.”

“I know, Damian. I know.”

Their gazes connect again. Though the blue of Damian’s is dark as monkshood, the danger isn’t in them now. He’s just a kid, and what’s more, he’s not trying to fight being just a kid.

“Do you have nightmares, Father?”

“All the time.” He doesn’t hesitate to answer.

Damian picks at the sheets in awkward contemplation for a moment. He hasn’t shirked Bruce’s touch, which is as miraculous as the Virgin Birth. Usually Damian can’t stomach even the smallest token of affection.

“Can I…I mean, if you’re still looking through those files…”

Bruce lets his hands fall from Damian’s shoulder, and shakes his head. “No. That’s my nightmare to deal with tonight.”

“It’s only that…I don’t want to be alone right now…” A piece of Damian’s old fire sparks in him; he averts his gaze, once again shamed by this weakness.

Bruce pats a spot a few feet away on the bed. “Knock yourself out. Just don’t mind me being up for a while. These reports won’t read themselves, unfortunately.”

Moments pass in which Damian remains still, tracing invisible maps on the Egyptian cotton.

“Only until I feel more calm.” A flash of blue is the only indication Bruce has that his son is watching him. “And you can read those reports to me. It might be distracting."

“I could. But I won’t. And whenever you feel like you want to cut and run…well, I won’t hold you back.”

He expects Damian to set up camp clear on the opposite side of the mattress. Instead, he settles himself a scant eight inches away, rolled onto his side. He curls his knees up, half way to fetal, gaze fixed on the wall.

Bruce smothers a chuckle. Laughter will probably entice his son to some kind of irritation. Then he takes the abandoned murder report back in his fingers. Envelope, papers and photographs all seem heavier now that he’s making himself look at them again.

His eyes are only a quarter down the second autopsy report when the warm weight next to him shifts. It becomes an even warmer, weightier presence as it moves flush with the side of his body. Despite immediate evidence, Bruce has to do a double take to ensure that, yes, Damian is actually curled up beside him.

A moment later, all reasoning takes flight for warmer climes. Damian rolls over, eyes closed, and…

The ellipses suspend a moment of pure disbelief. Bruce can’t use the words “snuggle” or “cuddle” because Damian Wayne is neither a snuggler nor a cuddler. Barring any other possible description, Bruce can only stare and marvel at the fact that his son just did, in fact, snuggle up to him.

Again he feels a glow in his chest. This time he lets it burn. The case file falls to the floor, defeated in its course of wielding tragedy like a weapon against all things that make life worth living.

Bruce smiles. Only the walls, the lamp and the scant pictures on the shelves around the room see it. Long ago he was denied the option of this—of true fatherhood. Long ago he told himself it was weakness, much as Damian was made to believe being a child was alike to a mortal sin.

But this is just for them.

With the tenderest of touches, Bruce brushes some of Damian’s dark hair off his forehead. The boy’s chest is already rising and falling steadily. The need for sleep has outweighed the terror of his nightmare. Here he is safe—here with his father.

And here with his son, Bruce is also safe from demons that a full-grown, evil-fighting man such as himself has failed to vanquish in the past. Realizing themselves defeated, these wraiths skirt from the master bedroom, slithering dejectedly out the windows and into the blackness of night.

Bruce settles into the pillows. He shuts the lamp off, because not even light is allowed to bare witness to what happens next—it’s too meaningful to Bruce to want to warrant intrusion from anything.

He places a gentle kiss on Damian’s forehead.

“Goodnight, buddy,” he says softly. “Sweet dreams.”

* * *

 

What seems a cruelly brief time later, Bruce stirs from the best sleep he’s had since he was eight years old. He grimaces into the darkness; his body makes known that it’s time to heed a call of nature.

Damian is still curled near him, the sound of his even breathing shaming even the most soothing of autonomous sensory meridian response Internet videos.

Bruce hates to leave, but he would hate to ruin his pajamas, bedding and his son’s respect even more. He slips from the bed with all the stealth and care he possess. Then he adjourns to the en suite bathroom. When he leaves a few moments later, he finds that there’s yet another early-hours-of-the-morning visitor standing over the threshold of his bedroom door.

A patch of moonlight from outside illuminates the bed in patches of pale silver-blue. Damian’s sleeping form is plainly visible. It’s here that Tim, lingering just outside the entrance to Bruce’s room, is staring. He’s in his usual pajamas of shorts and a black t-shirt with the symbol of Krypton emblazoned in red over the chest. The shirt is at least two sizes too large for him.

Bruce pads on panther feet across the carpet. Tim glances in his direction—again, eyes of blue. Only Tim’s eyes aren’t dark like Damian’s; Tim’s eyes are all optimism; clear-blue skies on the Fourth of July; infinite wisdom held beneath some distant, forgotten ocean.

He’s probably already put two and two together.

“Hey.” Bruce stops at the foot of his bed, close enough to both boys. It might be an effect of his insomnia, but it’s likely more his eyes being opened by the boy sleeping behind him; but somehow he feels like he’s seeing Tim again, yet oddly for the first time. “Couldn’t sleep either, huh?”

Tim shakes his head, gaze darting once more to Damian.

Ever since the other Robin entered the family, Tim has struggled to find his place. Dick is the Original; Jason is the Prodigal; Damian is Biological, and Tim…

Bruce knows this fear of not knowing where he belongs has eaten Tim alive more often than not. What’s more, he knows that Tim has fought to put on the brave face. He himself is culpable in the needless torment, because he’s often forgotten his boys in light of haunting the night.

Now, though, everything he ever thought he knew has been shaken; in this dark bedroom, everything feels safe…safe enough to see how much of a myopic jackass he’s been. Safe enough to not shirk the responsibility of admitting to that glaring flaw.

“Timmy…”

The endearment jolts Tim like a shock of white lightning. He stares at Bruce, looking, for all the world, like he just deduced the man’s secret identity for the second time in his life.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

Tim shrugs—an automatic response, a middling response. When he can’t play the hand he wants, he bluffs; conceals what he really thinks and feels all for the sake of those others who have their chips on the table.

“Couldn’t sleep.” He’s speaking as if he’s inside a church, because that’s just how goddamn conscientious Tim Drake is of others.

“That much is obvious.” Bruce chuckles a little. He peers closer at Tim’s face as the boy looks back at Damian. And then he sees the flicker of pain—of envy…of a dozen different responses firing off at once behind those clever, caring eyes.

Tim came into Bruce’s life like a wrecking ball, sans nude pop starlet astride. After Jason’s murder and Dick’s departure, Bruce wanted nothing to do with anything in the shape of a Robin. But Tim had persisted, and eventually won out. He’d worn the red of Robin longer than even Dick; yet in the chaos of Jason’s resurrection at the vile hands of an al Ghul, and Damian’s introduction into the fold—again, due to an al Ghul—Bruce often has difficulty sifting memories of Tim from the others.

Tonight—this morning?—he can see a piece of Tim’s soul clear as daylight.

Tim has never had this. Tim has never had the benefit of being the First, the Lost or the Blood. He was Just Tim—and Just Tim hasn’t had the same original bond as Bruce and Dick; or the same contentious efforts at the former as Bruce and Jason, or the familial ties as Bruce and Damian.

Guilt comes crawling back from its flight with the other demons. It taps at the windows blindly, calling Bruce, luring him like a siren. To be dashed upon its rocks would be brutal, yet familiar. And if there’s one other thing Bruce knows aside from how to handle a sleepless night, it’s that the most familiar abuse is better to some than the possibility of frightening change.

Damian stirs in his sleep, as if his subconscious self is wagging a stern finger at his father.

Bruce takes a breath, projects a loud, metal “ _go fuck yourself_ ” to the lingering Guilt, and pats the bed beside him.

“If you want to talk about anything—anything at all, Tim—I’m all ears.”

Tim swallows. “Don’t you need to sleep?”

“Don't _you_ need to sleep?”

Tim stares at his bare feet. “Do…do you even want—

Touch, Bruce finds, has been the most powerful sense this night in terms of communicating when speech fails. So he stretches his hand forth, wondering if this is how the God of Michelangelo felt when He was painted touching Adam. His hand scarcely covers Tim’s knuckles, but it’s enough. The boy looks him in the eye for the first time, scared but hopeful.

“Don’t you dare ever think that I don’t—that _we_ don’t. You’re family, Tim. You’re my son as much as Damian is.” The temptation to add some kind of joke—something in the vein of “and I have the stress lines to prove it” flits across Bruce’s mind; but he won’t profane in this. Not with Tim standing in front of him so afraid but so damn hopeful.

“It’s just…so damn hard sometimes.” Tim rubs his palms into his eyes—it must be some kind of inherited entanglement between Robin’s, Bruce thinks. “I never know if I’m trying hard enough, Dad.”

This wasn’t something Bruce expected; it nearly knocks the wind out of him.

Tim takes a breath. “It’s all I ever think about; the more I try not to, the more it persists. It’s like it’s biting into my brain sometimes, and I hate it so much.”

“I know. You might not believe it, but I know exactly how that feels, Timmy.”

A small, wry smile lifts Tim’s lips. “And _I_ know that _you_ know. That’s why it makes me feel so…fucking monstrous.” The last words are sotto voce, so quiet that they may well be a sigh of midnight breeze.

But Bruce won’t stand for this of all things.

“You are the most intelligent, intuitive person I know, Tim. Not just in this family, but period. And above all, you’ve got the biggest heart. I couldn’t have asked for better in any of my sons.” His fingers close around Tim’s hand. “I was amazed by you as a boy; and I am so damn proud of the man you’re turning into now.”

Tim is actually shaking now. In Conner Kent’s overlarge t-shirt, he looks even skinnier than he actually is. Just on the opposite side of seventeen, he’s nearing that threshold where the world will open up, for better and for worse.

And as Bruce sits there, holding this tether that’s been granted him, he understands that he really hasn’t failed. There’s going to be so much more than this for he and Tim. There will always be times when Tim—when all his boys—will need their father, no matter how far they may roam or how old any of them get.

“Do you mind…” Tim’s eyes fall on an empty space next to Damian. “Just so I can feel—

“There’s plenty of room, Timmy.”

Tim grins. Then a prodigious yawn stretches his mouth wide. He gives Bruce a guilty smile, and rounds the bed to settle quietly on the mattress.

“Dad?”

Bruce is already under his own covers, feeling the pull of sleep coming back for another tryst without any strings attached. He pauses, letting the title of “Dad” coming from someone he was convinced he’d damaged sink into every pore.

“Yes?”

Tim’s voice emanates from the dark on the other side of Damian. “This isn’t…y’know… _weird_ or anything, is it?”

Bruce chuckles softly; Damian instinctively curls against him again.

“There’s a subterranean secret base under the manor, accessible by a grandfather clock in the study. This is quite possibly the least weird thing this family has ever done.”

Weariness opens the door to slumber; the sound of Tim’s quiet laughter pushes Bruce over the threshold.

* * *

 

Whoever is talking thinks that they’re doing so quietly; but they’re not so stealthy as to not wake Bruce from yet another brief bout of restful sleep. He can tell that there are more bodies in the bed, because the spaces opposite the side not occupied by Tim and Damian are filled with heavy, warm weight.

 _Chatty_ , heavy, warm weight.

“I mean, he let me build a blanket fort in one of the spare bedrooms, but that was for, like, myself.” Dick’s voice—even if the familiar tone wasn’t stirring in Bruce’s sense-memory, he can picture the incident of which his eldest is describing quite vividly. All of the older sheets and quilts in the second floor linen closet had been festooned over antique furniture some time after Dick’s adoption. He’d burrowed under them, reading books well beyond curfew, pretending that the fleur de lis patterns of old quilts were stars in the sky.

Jason snorts, the teasing cadence of his dropped New England R’s softly mocking everything at large in the world.  
  
“Blanket forts. Who builds a blanket fort in this century and lives?”  
  
Bravado to mask jealousy. In a way, Jason is the most simple of the four of them; he wears his damage less like a badge of honour and more like an underwear model in a jockstrap at a photo shoot; it’s so glaringly obvious that he’s trying to stuff his Haines that there’s not a soul alive who can’t see through the act.

And Jason knows it; it’s only that he can’t help it.  
  
Dick is nothing loath to unravel the exterior. There’s a loose thread in Jason’s little strut-show, and Dick pulls at it until his brother is left completely exposed.  
  
“Right here, Jaybird. And let’s not forget the little circus tent we made over Christmas.”  
  
“Totally different.” The mattress shifts as someone—Jason, Bruce can tell from the weight—rolls over. “That was just...y’know...to keep the kid happy.”  
  
“Damian,” Dick amends softly.  
  
“Alright, alright...Damian.”  
  
Silence broken only by deep breathing from Tim and from Damian, now with his head half lolling onto his father’s chest.  
  
Then...  
  
“I just don’t want him to end up like I was.” Jason speaks even quieter than before; the sincerity all but breaks Bruce’s heart.  
  
“You were thirteen years old,” Dick reminds him.  
  
“Old enough to know better.”  
  
Again the sheets rumple. Dick, next to Bruce, props himself up on his elbow.  
  
“Want me to get some matches for that pyre, Saint Joan?”  
  
“Nice.”  
  
“What of it, Jason? You know that you’re different now. You’ve said it enough: that you like yourself better these days. What’s the point of tearing into the past?”  
  
“I did—  
  
“Yeah. You _did_. Y’know, the past version of do? I might not have been an unholy shithead when I was that young, but I was still pretty dumb sometimes. Ask the old man. I screwed up royally. But I’m here now...I’m home now, and so are you, and so is Timmy, and Damian’s not going to end up some psychotic antichrist, alright?”  
  
It’s a good thing Bruce isn’t a God-fearing man, or he’d be seeking contrition for how much Pride he’s felt this night. He smiles with his eyes half open, and holds Damian to him a little closer. All of his boys have turned out so damn good, and he’s not entirely unsure that he didn’t have at least some small part to play in it.  
  
Jason’s sigh fills the empty space of silence. “Gonna have to write that one down, Dickybird. It’s one hell of a Sunday sermon.”  
  
“As if you know a thing about going to a religious service.”  
  
“I might not, but I’d take you to church any day of the week.”  
  
“Jason!” Dick hisses.  
  
“What?”  
  
“That better have been another one of your attempts at humor.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“We’re practically related!”  
  
“Not by blood. ‘Sides, don’t think I haven’t felt you chub up when we wrestle.”  
  
Dick makes a series of noises that put Bruce in mind of a car backfiring. He finally settles on a punitive “Oh yeah,” followed by a “well don’t think I haven’t heard you groaning out my name whenever you play with your Batarang.”  
  
“Aw, you spying on me? That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. This why you roped me into the little slumber party right now? You rearin’ to rub up on me in my sleep?”  
  
“You wish.”  
  
Damian stirs and lets out a noise that is really a small whimper, but for the sake of his ego, all who bear witness tell themselves is a grunt. As amused as he is by the spat taking place next to him, Bruce isn’t about to let the quarrel intrude on Damian’s much-deserved rest.  
  
“Do you two want to keep it down?” He speaks only loud enough for them both to hear—the kind of quiet tone that would set most delinquents straight in a matter of seconds. “Your little brother is trying to sleep.”  
  
He feels Jason and Dick go still. Cracking his eyes open a fraction, Bruce sees that Dick staring at him, still propped on his elbows. His eldest son smiles in the near-darkness; the pale light of the receding moon ghosts over the bare skin of his torso, making him look luminous, highlighting his lean strength—a strength he’s honed with the help of his brothers and Bruce—of his family.  
  
Jason sighs again. “Sorry about that, Pops.”  
  
Dick stays supported by his elbows. Bruce opens his eyes just enough to fully see his oldest son looking at him with a smile that’s too victorious for his peace of mind. Bruce doesn’t even have to ask—he knows as well as Dick what battle he’s lost this night; and he really can’t imagine a better defeat.  
  
“Goodnight, Dad.”  
  
Long after Dick starts snoring, Bruce is still awake, surrounded by a nest of robins.

As far as sleepless nights go, this isn't bad at all.

**Author's Note:**

> A friend of mine once told me that my modus operandi with fanfiction involves taking characters away from authors, wrapping them up in a blanket and not letting the original creators have them back until they learn how to play nicely with them...
> 
> Please let me know what you think in the comments!


End file.
